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The juco recruit from Chipola (?) J. C. will be on campus on Friday. The returning players along with Fish, etc. will be scrimmaging at West Pine Friday late afternoon or early evening - exact time unknown. With RV, PH, CS and JF - all good students graduating on time, some with double majors - Brad has clamped down and increased the study hall requirements for the returnees.

JJRAY: The skyhawks it is.

Looking ahead to next year is a puzzlement for me when I try and factor Issac and Justin into the mix. No doubt both of them have certain talent and both have shown flashes of that. However, I believe that how we currently run our offense does not play to either of their strengths. JJ needs to get out on the court and run and jump. We seldom get up and down the court very quickly. Issac needs for us to clear out and let him attack defenses. Neither does he get the opportunity to do so consistently. Brad said in a recent interview with Frank that he designed his offense to suit the talent and to mazimize the teams ability to win. He indicated that he would be willing to revamp his offensive scheme next year based on the talent coming in. No mention of the defensive side which I was glad to (not) hear. The man can teach and coach D. I suspect this years 50 point games will be in the 60's next year and our 60 point games this year will become games in the 70's next year. I would predict this rather than merely suspect it IF Tommie shows up, but unfortuantely it's getting real late for test scores to dramatically improve.

I just got off the phone with Kenny Brown. He is a great kid. He is currently taking his last 9 hours at SLU and will graduate after completing them. He will be signing a contract with a pro team in Ireland. He said he was contacted by a semi-pro team in St. Louis (the Scout or Scouts? or something like that) and might try to play for them a while before he leaves for Europe. Congratulations to Kenny. Josh Fisher, another class act, is engaged to a woman he met in Spain and will be married in the not too distant future. I believe he met her on the teams tour to Spain. Congratulations to Josh.

Any ideas on what conference(s)the officials were from? I don't believe I ever saw them before. They were horrible the first half but thankfully swallowed their whistles a great deal the second half.

Brad was on KMOX tonight and already had one of his assistants call Romar and said all slu's uab tapes would be in the mail to Romar tommorow. He said "friendship runs deeper than conference affiliation."

Carlos was a great kid. He went out to USC and I think finished up a master's in counseling. The last time I heard from him he was looking into working as a counselor in a drug rehab center. He really maximized his talent when he played for spoon.

When you look at the consistently poor records of women's bb and men's baseball, it seems like no one in the Athletic Department really cares. With men's bb and soccer the only revenue producing sports, it just seems like an unending string of losing seasons means little or nothing to the powers that be in Athletics.Didn't the womens team only win 2 games in conference all year?

...and going to Vegas in between visits to Tom's.

1)Yes, Reggie seems to have emerged as an "all or nothing" scorer. On his off nights we just don't have enough fire-power. 2) I wouldn't give up on IV quite yet. An 18 year old freshman competing in CUSA is a big leap. 3) Reggie and JJ have one common problem on defense. Neither one can consistently mentally focus for 30 seconds on defense. If the other team comes down and quickly jacks up a shot that's one thing. If they run 25 seconds or so of clock, JJ and Reggie cannot focus for that period of time and some where in the sequence their man is left open, sometimes embarssingly so. 4) Several weeks back I stated that a true pf was our #1 need in this years recruiting class (and our achilles heel in recruiting for a long, long time). I could not believe that several people suggested JJ was a pf in waiting. Whoa! That Cincy game was men against boys.We got out rebounded so bad I think they stopped counting. Playing pf is about attitude, heart and playing with abandon. Jeff Harris was 6'3" in his socks but played the position effectively. JJ is 6'8" and a far better athelete than Jeff. Believe me, JJ would NOT want to bang with Jeff Harris. No way.Let's remember JJ was run off by K State not KU. BRAD SOS - Please, please find a real PF so we can stop hoping and pretending there's one in waitng on our bench somewhere. Otherwise this board will continue to have endless messages debating why we can't get back to the big dance.

Bonwich you hit a raw nerve with me with your comment about the ridiculous notion of having a kid shoot baskets qt half tiem t0 win a bike and no one can find a ball. Hello! We are at a basketBALL game! Our basketball game day operation is turning into a JOKE. Let me recap my day. I go to the game a bit late and there are about 250 people at the side entrance I use standing in line. There are 3 turnstiles, 2 of them are turned sideways so the 2 ushers not taking any tickets can lean on them while chatting the whole while. One young girl is taking tickets at the third turnstile. It takes over 10 minutes to get through the turnstile (we may have been some of that group that arrived late). An elderly couple in line behind me who have obviously never been to a bills game say, "boy they must have a big crowd tonight like they used to have in the old days." I say "no, we don't have big crowds any more, the place will be 2/3's empty when you get inside." By the time we finally get to the turnstile and the 2 goldbricking ushers are still chit chatting leaning on the 2 turnstiles the elderly couple say, "gosh this is terrible, now I know why Bill couldn't give these darn tickets away." My sense is they have seen their last Bills game. I next get to go in and watch a team with a 20 point lead self destruct. By the way, I think the DePaul coach did a great job at halftime. He sure got more of the match ups he wanted in the second half. Then I get to watch a boy pretend to shoot a basketball at half time. I next go out to buy my grandson either a TF, RB, IO, or JJ bills jersey and find our great athletic marketing department (didn't we hire someone new this year in sports marketing?)has done it again. The only bills jerseys in the house for sale - #21 and #4. Thus, no sale. I leave the game, go to a bar with my wife and end up talking to a guy at the bar who has tried to call Woolard off and on all year- he tells me it is impossible. A womans voice answers and gives you her extention #. If you leave a message it is not returned. I remember a post on the board a while back about how the development office isn't ready to discuss the arena fund raising yet. My season ticket $ is going to pay these guys salaries?

Without TF getting his minutes it is obvious we lose the rebounding battle. Reggie was tied for our rebounding leader at half with 3.

Billiken Roy- I agree with your summary. Tom has been fighting a pulled muscle in the groin area and the lack of resting it has finally caught up with him. Too bad.

Watching #45 work over poor Chris Sloan was really ugly tonight. Don't blame Chris. For four years Chris has been playing out of position and we recruit no one who is a legit power forward. I continue to maintain that unless we recruit a legitimate PF with one of the two remaining scholarships (I continue to be pessimistic about Tommie)this is NOT a good recruting class. Issac does not have the personna to be a PF, he is best in lots of space and JJ wants to run and jump NOT bang. If a 6'6" guy from Chuppala JC averaging about 10 points a game is the answer, I'll be surprised. It sounds like one more example of someone playing out of position because we can't recruit a true PF then we blame the kid we recruit for not being a PF. Where is Anthony Bonner when you need him?

Re:Shaw my point is this - I think he is good enough, obviously you think he is good enough. Unfortunately, he is headed to siuc. He was very interested in slu but alas we didn't get him. Good recruiting involves reading situations. Like, knowing when to get off of Grimes in time to get Shaw. Right now we are "waiting" on a 6'6" PF to go with a 5'9" point gaurd and Luke. Lidell at this point is not elgible. Sloan at 6'7" has not and cannot be expected to be a real difference maker for us. He has good games and he has lousy games but his senior year and his career has been marked by inconsistency. We have no power forward on the roster that can mach up with a true power forward. It now appears we won't again next year.Maybe JJ someday but it sure seems as if he and Brad haven't "really bonded" yet. Lidell is the difference maker in this class. Whether or not he will ever make any difference for us becomes more worrisome as the days creep by and no acceptable test score is forthcoming. Without him and with the addition of an undersized 6"6" pf, I don't see us measurably improving next year.

I agree the pattern of one and only one "go to guy" is long standing. So is the problem of no real power forward since ??? (Bonner?). Sure, Donnie Dobbs, Jeff Harris and others have done yoeman duty as power forwards at 6'3 and 6'4. It all starts with recruiting. Charlie Spoonhour used to say publicly he was glad Jeff Harris was 6'4 not 6'8 because if he was 6'8 he would have been playing for the Arkansas Razorbacks.The truth hurts. Even now, I am not nearly as sold on next years recruiting class as everyone else. I see our glaring need as a power forward - Grimes is gone and Shaw I guess wasn't good enough, or so we're told. Given that the "mid majors" swms and siu spank us around on a regular basis, I will be watching Shaw closely down at Carbondale. I hope that we recruit right over Shaw with our last scholarship, but I'm not terribly optimistic based on our inability to recruit PF's with any degree of consistency.Add to that the fact that at this point it is probably just as likely that Lidell may never play for the Bills as it is that he will,this class may not look as great as some think. I hope I am wrong, but our track record indicates otherwise.

Schasz, I tend to agree with you. Both teams have some great athletes, but Cincy looked real undisciplined at times. IF we can contral the pace and beat their pressure they will get very frustrated. If we can't, we'll be the one's frustrated. I really wish that game was at Savis, but we've beaten them at Cincy before. We need a nail biting tough win on the road. Maybe Cincy will be it.

Men's basketball makes $, quite a lot, for the athletic program. Womens basketball loses a lot of $. I think this has a lot to do with why Pizotti is still around. If there was $ to be made from that program, changes would have been made far more quickly. Maybe the new on campus arena will help with recruiting and maybe with attendance -when they leave the old West Pine gym behind.

I agree. It sure seems like we really fo need to go after a juco power forward. Unfortunately, when we pull in foreign players from these national teams, they always have a "sit out so many games" restriction coming in. I think we have a good recruiting class to this point. If we can pull in a power forward who can start for us next year and do the job we might have a very good recruiting class on the way. Time will tell.

Let's not forget that JJ had a broken wrist last year. His practice time was cut due to that.

Too bad about frank getting ripped. Don't forget, TV ratings for nhl "national" telecasts are a joke - they're lower than televised rodeos. It is a cult sport, NOBODY outside nhl cities watches it and the ratings in many nhl cities are terrible. Next time they have to let their tv contract, which is miniscule in comparison to other pro sports, they may have to pay the stations.

I think we tend to take fish for granted. He does so much on the court. By the way he's exactly what MU needs. I'm glad they got pulley and we've got fish. Not flashy, one tenacious strong defender, not afraid to go to the hoop tough, once in a while he'll hit a long three at just the right time, he's unselfish in every way, a quiet unassuming leader by example, and, to top it off, he's engaged to a spanish woman who is originally from the Madrid campus. There are very few point guards in the country who have the total package he displays.

On the way home from work Friday, Frank called in to Mike Clayborn's and Bob Ramsey's show. As you might expect, the subject turned to Billiken BB. Bob and Frank spend a lot of time together on the road with Billiken BB. Frank said " Bob Ramsey is the most passionate Billiken BB fan I have ever met.After a Billiken loss, it is unbelivable. He suffers a loss worse than Bobby Knight. He replays every mistake the bills made over and over again and bemoans the officiating for hours. Clayborn chimed in, " I won't go to dinner with him or be around him after a billiken loss. He really suffers for hours."

San Antonio had Marque in for a workout recently. Unfortunately, Charlie Ward was released and they decided they were more interested in Charlie than Marque. They did, however, tell Marque they wanted him to play with their summer development team and assured him he could play in the NBA. Kenny Brown was in Portugal getting ready to play professionally there when he suffered a leg injury. He is back in St. L. and enrolling in classes in the hope of graduating.

Schasz/Thicks: Thanks a bunch for keeping me up to date tonight.I'm out of bud but we've broken out the champagne a lettle early. Great win tonight! Schasz, Thicks is right. I'm from St. L. but come to Florida in late Dec. and Jan. each year.We hang in Lauderdale but always get down to the keys each winter. I hope to get back for the K State game on Saturday. Again, thanks.